Cricket’s Healer

A decade has passed. Usha is history, Joshi is 49. Yet the patient list of this Mumbai-based sports medicine specialist just keeps growing. Right now Sachin Tendulkar’s elbow — and India’s aspirations — are in his hands.

Sports medicine seems so appropriate for a man who started off as a badminton player and even won the Bombay University title twice, while at Mumbai’s Grant Medical College.

In 1981, Joshi moved to the United States Sports Academy, Mobile, Alabama, for two years. His specialisation was arthoscopic surgery. Then, being the quintessential Mumbai man — a clinic in Dadar, badminton games at the Matunga Gymkhana — he came home.

JOSHI is driven by a rare professional integrity. ‘‘I am firm in my decision. The person across the table is just a patient, not a name,’’ he says. Saurav Ganguly learnt it the hard way. The Indian captain wanted a ‘‘less than fit’’ Ashish Nehra — he had a bad ankle — to tour South Africa in 2001-02. But Joshi vetoed the idea.

In a sense, Joshi found his calling 13 years ago. He was watching television, seeing Ravi Shastri make 206 in the Sydney test of 1992. It was a marathon innings, in the course of which Shastri hurt his knee, and repeatedly went down in pain. ‘‘I was cursing his luck,’’ Joshi remembers, ‘‘his agony was being played out in front of me. Luckily he went to a surgeon I knew in Sydney.’’

Shastri returned mid-way through the tour — and got ready for the first on-field fitness test for an Indian cricketer, at Mumbai’s Cricket Club of India, with the media and national selectors watching. He was declared fit subject to ‘‘constant rehab work’’ under Doc Joshi. Sadly, the knee flared up again and Shastri soon retired.

‘‘If he (Shastri) had been playing today,’’ says Joshi, ‘‘he would be put through the same tests as Sachin. It is a similar case of muscle loss. But we are better prepared now. Today it is 50 per cent surgery and 50 per cent rehab.’’

IT’S been a long journey from the days when Ali Irani, then the Indian team’s doctor, used to tap Joshi’s expertise. In 1986, this got him his first player patient, off-spinner Shivlal Yadav. Treating fast bowler T.A. Sekhar’s knee landed him a consultancy at the MRF Pace Foundation in Chennai.

That started a trend. Kapil Dev, Mohammed Azharuddin, Ajit Agarkar, even hockey players like Dhanraj Pillay, M.R. Negi and M.H. Kaushik began coming to Joshi. In 1999, he was formally appointed ‘‘medical adviser’’ to the BCCI.

The biggest hurdle he has to contend with is ‘‘fear of surgery’’. Javagal Srinath lost almost a year of his career due to a shoulder injury. When Joshi suggested arthoscopic surgery, the fast bowler kept refusing. ‘‘Ravi (Shastri) had proved them all wrong,’’ Joshi sighs, ‘‘look at Shane Warne and the Aussies, they are always ready for surgeries. We prefer all sorts of therapies, but not surgery.’’

Other than cricket, India’s glamour zone is cinema. Fittingly Shahrukh Khan and Anil Kapoor have consulted Joshi. A unknown young man visited him in 2000. ‘‘He came to me with a shoulder problem. I asked him what he did for a living. He said, ‘I am an actor’.’’ The next month, Hrithik Roshan was a superstar, with Kaho Na Pyaar Hai.

Maybe it was some of Dr Joshi’s luck rubbing off.